


i am the swift, uplifting rush

by seraf



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Chronic Pain, Disabled Character, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Mutual Support, Nihilism, it's just mentioned briefly but its important, mike has episodes of chronic pain! after being struck by lightning, the concept of 'nothing matters' is something that can be so homoerotic <3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:07:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27854790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraf/pseuds/seraf
Summary: he can’t escape them. not really.like learning a magician’s trick. once you know how it works, you can’t really see the show again without being able to see where the trick is, the moment of the slight of hand. once you learn that everything ends, or how to see someone’s death wound as close to them as their shadow.the moment you die will be exactly the same as this one.
Relationships: Oliver Banks/Michael "Mike" Crew
Comments: 17
Kudos: 62





	i am the swift, uplifting rush

the corpse roots travel _through_ him, now, when they need to - their twisting lengths stringing from point a to point b without worrying if he’s between them, like a needle pulling thread through a battered piece of cloth. making him _aware,_ constantly, of that person’s life, and the relentless march towards the end of all things. the sickening relief he feels when their time _does_ come, and the root shrivels and dies alongside them, like the proverbial thread of fate being cut. it’s worse in his dreams. six or seven bend through him, coming from one direction and reaching out in another, like vines strung along an invisible wall.

he can’t escape them. not really.

like learning a magician’s trick. once you know how it works, you can’t _really_ see the show again without being able to see where the trick is, the moment of the slight of hand. once you learn that everything ends, or how to see someone’s death wound as close to them as their shadow.

the moment you die will be exactly the same as this one.

it’s not something you can unlearn. the moment you die will be exactly the same as this one. and how _universal_ that is. that people simply _end_ , every second, and there is no fanfare, or halt in the procession. the world will turn in the same way when your father is dead as it did when he was alive.

it tears into his head sometimes. though he couldn’t be sure whether that’s the feeling of the corpse roots, or the lack of sleep, or the relentless churning of anxiety mixed with dread mixed with whatever you could call the mix of dull resignation and recoiling from being unable to block out the worst of the deaths. knowing, when he crossed through a black tendril wrapped tight around a man, how long it would take him to die under the wheels of the train he fell in front of. seeing a girl who couldn’t be more than six with one wrapped around her throat, where her neck would break in about two weeks from the car crash she couldn’t avoid.

inevitability is a funny thing sometimes.

the cool hand resting across his forehead only helps so much. touching the corpse roots feels like being plunged into ice water, and in comparison, mike’s wind-burned fingers almost feel warm. still. it doesn’t _hurt_ matters, and it’s . . . good to feel the rush under mike’s fingertips of the pulse he still has. when the void filling him doesn’t forget to give him one.

‘ sorry, i’m . . . not having a great morning, ‘ he murmurs, head dipping to mike’s shoulder, as he becomes aware, belatedly, that mike had been speaking to him. outside the window, a root larger around than the taxi it follows swims by in a crowd of exhaust, and oliver’s eyes burn when he closes them. that just seems to be part of his life now.‘ there’s . . . it’s a lot, right - it’s a lot of _noise._ ‘ noise isn’t quite the right word. but mike remembers the air swimming with fractals, and lichtenberg organs flashing over his bed at night, and knows what he means.

‘ let me help, ‘ mike says, finally, taking his hand back from oliver’s forehead. oliver looks at him, a little blearily. at the shattered-out deadroots of two deaths that had-and-had-not-been, the cracked webbing in greydead branches over his skin, the halo of corpseroot so drained of color it’s gone almost white. struck by lightning. medically dead for over an entire minute, lying in the rain. a fall that took his life, but didn’t quite kill him. the twirl of cut roots that wraps his head in the ever-present reminder that had the endless space not taken the offering of his life, that would have been what hit the concrete first.

the black root that stabs through the back of his head, burrowing almost all the way through his skull. the way it webs out at the point of entry. he’s seen enough corpseroots by now to know what a bullet wound-to-be looks like. he’s just been too afraid to reach into this root, to find out what reason someone could have for . . . _executing_ mike, really.

_the moment you die will be exactly the same as this one,_ he had told mike once, even as he helped him into the shower chair, mike’s mouth ozone-bitter with the pain racking his body, twisting across his spine in white-hot pulses. his own bad day. the water had been coming down around the both of them, sticking mike’s hair to the back of his neck, and the color of his wet hair almost blended into the star-pattern of the web of death tearing the back of his head open. he hoped mike would understand. he did, and . . . didn’t.

for mike, every moment is the same - in the sense that in the cosmic scale, this is less than a fraction of a fraction of a second. this moment is so small as to be completely regardless. but oliver means - _you will die. you will die, and there will be no difference between the you that is here with me and the you taking a bullet to the back of his head._

but maybe _none of us are important enough to change the uncaring emptiness of the universe with our lives_ or _our deaths_ is close enough to understanding. it hadn’t been the time to push the topic, anyway, mike sagging against the back of the shower chair with his eyes squeezed shut tight against the white-hot migraine pulses threatening to crack his feeble skull.

mike wants to help him, now. he’s not sure how that can work. 

still, he nods, eyes shut, as though blocking out the light can keep out the way his head pounds. as though it has anything to do with it.

‘ come on, ‘ mike murmurs, tugging gently at his shoulders. ‘ sit up for me. ‘

he does, pushing his body through the motions, swaying gently as he sits. before he really died, before he became inextricably aware of what death _means,_ he used to joke at the worst points of his anxiety that he was just a corpse, animated by caffeine and neurons gone into overthinking-overdrive-overexertion. it’s different, now. when he can feel his lack of a pulse.

mike sits behind him, chest pressed to the plane of oliver’s back, arms loosely wrapped around his middle, his knees propped up by oliver’s sides. it takes oliver a long moment to allow himself to relax, leaning back against mike. he thinks there might be some part of him that can’t quite _remember_ how to relax, to force his muscles into something that isn’t stiffness. there’s a joke about rigor mortis to be made here, somewhere.

his eyes are still shut, even as mike gently tucks his chin over oliver’s shoulder. something in the air . . . _changes._

‘ open your eyes, ‘ mike murmurs, voice close enough to oliver’s ear that it almost makes him shiver. he sighs, a quiet exhale of a thing from lungs that no longer need to fill. habit is a hard thing to shake, he supposes. he’s not _afraid_ to open his eyes. but if he’s honest, there’s something like a low-level dread. not that he’ll see something terrible - well. maybe that he’ll see something terrible. after all, he supposes you could call the corpseroots terrible. but that when he opens his eyes, nothing will have _changed._

there’s a kiss like a breeze to the back of his neck. ‘ trust me, ‘ mike says.

and oliver does. of course he does.

his eyes open to . . . endlessness.

it should be antithetical to what he is. the concept of the infinite and the idea that everything _must_ end - they shouldn’t harmonize as well as they do. but oliver looks out to this endless, open sky, the both of them just - floating there amidst a watercolor fade of different shades of cloudless blue, and there’s nothing but _peace,_ soaring through his heart. it’s just - _empty._ devoid of anything death could touch, the roots fallen away altogether. mike’s would still be here, of course, but - it’s with a sudden swell of gratitude that oliver realizes why they’re sitting the way they are, oliver’s back leaning against him, unable to see mike.

he’s shot execution style. in the back of the head. the corpseroot entering through the base of his skull all blunt and brutal. but in this position, head forced to point in the opposite direction - oliver can’t see it. all of mike he can see is the arms wrapped around his waist and some of his face, scarred silver-white in his periphery.

even point nemo hadn’t come anything close to this kind of . . . _emptiness._ to this kind of peace. there had always been that undercurrent, and the unease that came with knowing he _shouldn’t be there._ but how empty it had been . . . he’d found some true comfort in that.

and this is beyond that. true emptiness, stretching on forever and always.

‘ can we stay for awhile? ‘ he asks mike, voice a cracking whisper, as though scared he could shatter this by speaking too loud, like the corpseroots would be able to tell he was here and follow him. his head feels clearer than it has since . . . he can’t remember when. it’s hard to feel that old creeping anxiety here. there’s nothing but the empty sky and the feeling that none of that really _matters._

it’s all so vast. it can’t matter.

‘ of course, ‘ mike says, chin propping a little more steadily over oliver’s shoulder. ‘ as long as you want. ‘

oliver leans back against him, and breathes in the empty sky.

**Author's Note:**

> yes i know this is incoherent. at this point im calling incoherence my writing style <3 love and light


End file.
